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Outstanding
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Bookslut Angela Stubbs
The work here is that of a consummate storyteller. Homes’s familiarity with the city of Los Angeles is impressive and moreover, the accuracy with which she describes those who inhabit this surreal landscape is bar none.
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Outstanding
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Booklist
Homes is always riveting, but this juggernaut hits a higher mark with its aerodynamic prose, finely calibrated humor, and spiky characters.
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
An extremely likable book.
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Favorable
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Library Journal Jenn B. Stidham
An engaging and timely tale told with a balanced mix of dark humor and sympathy for individuals enduring the foibles of everyday living. [15 Mar 2006, p.63]
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Favorable
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Houston Chronicle Nora Seton
Comic and compassionate. The first-person present-tense narrative works well. And perhaps if you have lived numbly, this energetic story of personal salvation and the struggle to do good could be a wake-up pinch.
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Ann Cummins
Hilarious.
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Favorable
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Sydney Morning Herald John Freeman
Still, This Book Will Save Your Life contains the most realistic and hilarious conversations in any of her books.
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Favorable
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The Observer Viv Groskop
It shifts your perspective on life and in the most darkly entertaining way.
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Favorable
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The Guardian Frank Cottrell Boyce
This book will no more change your life than one of Anhil's doughnuts will but, like those doughnuts, it's packed with unexpected pleasures.
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph Kasia Boddy
The satire here is deft and funny, but often visits the usual suspects.
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Mixed
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Daily Telegraph Judith Flanders
Whatever the intention, if Homes were not the delicate, refined stylist that she is, this would be well-nigh unbearable, but the acid-etched prose, the balance and heft that is given to each paragraph, and each chapter, makes reading the novel a surreal experience.
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Mixed
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Salon Heather Havrilesky
Given the sharp wit and the firm grasp of missed connections and self-deluded tricks found in Homes' other writing, particularly in her vibrant novel of suburban dysfunction, "Music for Torching," you have to wonder why she has chosen to make it easy on herself with so many shiny, adorable characters, uplifting little shortcuts and conveniently timed acts of God.
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Mixed
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Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Reese
Strenuously life-affirming.
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Mixed
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PopMatters John Davidson
Like Richard's luxury house, this novel is full of brilliant expressed details built upon shaky ground.
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Mixed
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The New York Times Book Review Walter Kirn
Her miniature editorials on class and status belong in a 1960's Newsweek column. She scourges Hollywood in all the ways that make it tingle with guilty ecstasy.
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Mixed
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Village Voice Rachel Aviv
The book, which draws on the most stylish strategies of self-improvement (Gyrotonics, meditation, inner-butt massage), is hopeful without being wholesome.
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Unfavorable
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Washington Post Ron Charles
The larger problem, though, is the dullness of Homes's satiric edge. She portrays Los Angeles as a city collapsing -- morally and physically -- but it's Apocalypse Lite.
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Unfavorable
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LA Weekly Brendan Bernhard
The novel’s most troubling weakness is its overall uncertainty of tone. Line by line, it’s expertly handled, but Homes’ decision to counter a tale of spiritual renewal with a landscape of geographic apocalypse ultimately feels like a cop-out.
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Unfavorable
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Boston Globe Gail Caldwell
We all know redemption isn't requisite to a novel, but some sort of aesthetic raison d'etre is. I'm not sure why Homes wrote this book: There's nobody in it, no key event or setup, that you care about or want to remember.
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Unfavorable
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Christian Science Monitor Erik Spanberg
Her novel, alas, does not include novel perspective. And the relentless parade of quirky characters and too-cute coincidences grate...This is "Get Shorty" - with a layer of flabby sentimentality clouding the picture.
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Terrible
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The New York Times Michiko Kakutani
Dreadful...The novel is also devoid of any verve or style the author might have demonstrated in the past. An energetic embrace of dark dysfunction has given way to a phony, leaden-footed rendition of spiritual uplift.
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